Supper was bread and cheese and hot apple cider against the evening’s drizzling chill. Recreation was brief; no one was inclined to walk for long even in the damp shelter of the cloister. They all gathered in the warming room, waiting for Compline, and wishing the rule permitted a fire before October’s end. After awhile, Frevisse became aware that Dame Claire had gone out.
When she returned, Frevisse was waiting for her in the cloister. They hurried into the slipe, where Dame Claire said with mixed eagerness and anger, “It was henbane. It’s useful for some things if carefully handled and poison if it’s not, and it’s easily come by. Red face, cold limbs, thirst, incoherence and inability to speak at all, delirium, the apple of the eyes so huge any light hurts them, everything seeming to be colored red. All of those are symptoms of it, laid out clear and plain in my book.”
“And every one of them Lady Ermentrude had—
“Before she ate or drank a single thing here.”
“We must tell Domina Edith right away,” said Dame Claire, but the bell began its summons for Compline.
Frevisse shook her head and said quickly because all talking should stop with the first ring, “Tomorrow. There’s nothing to be done tonight and I’ll have time to think on it by then.”
Dame Claire nodded agreement; nothing could be done tonight, no matter what was said.
Frevisse tried to lose herself in the brief, familiar service and its quiet, closing prayer, Nunc dimittis: “Now, Lord, send your servant away in peace….” They sang it in low voices, a plaintive plainsong softened to silence at the end, bringing with it a sense of rest. Not until they had all made silent procession back to the dormitory and she had stripped off her outer gown and slipped into bed did her mind begin again the relentless search for a question, or questions, that would show her the road to the truth.
But she fell asleep in the middle of her mulling, and did not wake until the cluster of small bells by the dorter door jangled her awake for Matins and Lauds in the dark middle of the night.
When the long service was done and she was back in bed, listening to sleep come back to everyone else, she found she was utterly awake. Thoughts ran at random, taking her nowhere, refusing to be disciplined.
So she heard the clumsy, cautious steps on the stairs from the cloister before they reached the dorter, and catching up a shawl kept for such night-rising, went quickly from her cell toward the small light at the head of the stairs. Old Ela, a servant from the guest hall who rarely ventured so far into the cloister, looked up as if grateful to see her and, unwilling to wake the other sleepers with her message, beckoned at Frevisse, turned, and dragged her lame foot down the stairs again and out into the cloister walk. Frevisse followed her.
“It was you I was coming for, my lady,” Ela declared in a whisper. “Only I didn’t know how I’d find you in the dark. But the boy said I must try, that I had to come since he could not and it’s a desperate matter. Robert, he said to tell you he was, and said I had to come straight away, though he never gave me even a ha’pence for doing it. Is it all right?”
“Very all right,” Frevisse assured her. “I doubt he has a ha’penny to his name to spare. What’s the desperate matter?”
“He says to tell you that they were talking late over there. But I could have told you that without his word on it; we all could hear that much of it, right enough. Loud, they were, then yelling at each other and then sinking down to soft again.”
“Who?”
“Sir Walter mostly. At the crowner hammer and tongs, and him not yelling back much, seems. He was objecting some, I guess, but feeble. Then everything settled and they went to their beds, except that boy Robert, who comes and tells me I have to tell you that they’re meaning to take Thomasine in the morning.”
Frevisse drew a sharp breath, then steadied herself and said firmly, “That they won’t be able to do. We’re keeping her close in the cloister.”
“That’s where they’re meaning to do it, Robert said!” Ela relished the shocks her tale was dealing. “When you’ve all gone in to breakfast and they can be certain where she is, they mean to come in from the orchard, through the infirmary door, and to the refectory and have her and be out with her before anything can be done. Now there’s wickedness for you, and against God’s own lamb, too, for that’s what the child is. Who else shall I be telling? There can be a goodly few of us between them and her when they come, and we won’t be bare-handed either.”
“Don’t tell anyone!” Frevisse said quickly. The last thing they needed was a confrontation between angry, armed priory servants and Sir Walter’s men. “Keep this all to yourself.”
“But if they think to take Lady Thomasine—”
“They won’t take her. Not now that we know their plans. But don’t tell anyone else about it or we might start a fight that’ll have people hurt who need not be. And don’t let anyone know you’ve come to me, or that Robert ever spoke to you. Sir Walter will surely kill him if he knows it.”
Old Ela’s eyes opened very wide. “So that’s the sort of man he is! A Fenner that would kill a Fenner.” She made a sound of disgust.
“And maybe worse than that to you if you’re found out. So keep you quiet about this.” Frevisse was not above unveiled threats; the fewer people who knew trouble was coming, the fewer there would be to make it worse.
Ela nodded her understanding. “No one will hear of it from me, I promise you. I’m back to my blankets and there I’ll stay till I’m dragged out at dawn. God’s blessing on you.”
“And on you,” Frevisse said to her back as the old woman scuttled away along the shadowed walk.
The rain had long since ended, but its chill and damp were still in the air. Frevisse shivered with more than the night chill and turned toward Domina Edith’s chamber.
The prioress slept in her own room off her parlor, above the hall kept for her own use. It was not difficult to rouse her lay servant sleeping just inside her doorway, and easier still to persuade the woman that Frevisse must talk to her mistress. The mere fact of Frevisse daring to be there at that hour was almost argument enough. Yet before she went to summon the prioress, Domina Edith called from her bed, “Who is it? What’s the matter? Is it Dame Frevisse? Let her in.” The servant went quickly to open the door, and Domina Edith continued, “You can go. Take your pallet into the parlor and finish your sleep there. Go, go. Come here, Dame.”
Domina Edith had been sleeping propped nearly upright on her pillows. As with so many of the elderly, she slept lightly and awakened easily, and in the small glow from the banked fire, her eyes were fully aware as Frevisse went quickly to kneel beside her bed.
“I pray you pardon me, my lady,” Frevisse said.
“Most likely I will. Tell me what brings you so urgently.”
“Old Ela from the guest hall just brought me word that Sir Walter means to seize Thomasine in the refectory at breakfast and have her out of the nunnery by force.”
Domina Edith’s face tightened with mixed anger and grief. “And Montfort supports him in this deed?”
“I gather so. Forced to it, I think. Sir Walter is wanting to have the matter settled so he can be back to Lord Fenner’s bedside as soon as may be.”
Domina Edith nodded slowly, her eyes contemplative and sad. “Not grief or justice, but only greed and a prideful need that someone must suffer if a Fenner does. Poor man.”
“Poor Sir Walter” was not something Frevisse was inclined to consider. She said quickly, “I need your permission to take Thomasine into sanctuary. Church walls should be enough to keep her safe until we can gather what we need to prove her innocent.”
“I think the only way you may do that is to find the guilty one.”
Frevisse hesitated, then said, “I think we can do that.”
“You’ve learned something that makes it possible?”
“Just before Vespers. I’ve been thinking on it since and would have told you in the morning.”
“It must be drawing
on to Prime now.”
“But Thomasine—”
“Is a long way from breakfast yet. Tell me.”
“Dame Claire thinks Lady Ermentrude was neither drunk nor brain fevered when she rode in here from Sir John and Lady Isobel’s. She thinks she was poisoned with henbane before she ever reached St. Frideswide’s.”
Domina Edith’s eyelids sank, hooding her eyes. But very clearly she said, “Another poison altogether, is that the way of it? And given to her before she returned here. A poison that made her seem drunk.”
“Dame Claire recited the symptoms of henbane, and they described Lady Ermentrude’s behavior exactly.”
“So it had to have been done at Sir John’s or on her way back to us.”
“Yes.”
“But there’s still no reason we know of for anyone to do it.”
“No.”
Domina Edith nodded. The hooded eyes closed, and she might have been drifting off to sleep, but Frevisse doubted it and waited, until the prioress raised her head and said, “Three times someone tried to kill her then, and did not care another died by the way. That’s wickedness indeed. So you must go on asking questions. Find out who among her people did it.”
“Or among Sir John’s.”
“Or Sir John and Lady Isobel themselves.”
Domina Edith said it in the same simple tone she had said all the rest, taking Frevisse unprepared. But she had voiced the same idea herself to Dame Claire, so, “Yes,” she agreed after a moment.
Domina Edith nodded. “They quarreled with Lady Ermentrude, and there must have been a reason for it. The pity of it is that we’ll never convince our crowner nor Sir Walter until we find the store of henbane and stains of it on the hand that mixed the potion, which we cannot do. So go see Thomasine into sanctuary with my blessing, and I’ll see to Sir Walter not disturbing our peace come morning.”
“If you send him word he’s been forestalled, he’ll know someone betrayed him.”
“But if I tell my gossiping servant that you’ve been frightened into convincing me Thomasine should be in sanctuary, then my gossiping servant will surely have word of it all through the nunnery and to the guest halls before we’re half through Prime and long before we’re in the refectory for breakfast.”
That was true enough, and Frevisse nodded acceptance, then curtseyed and left, but did not return to the dorter for Thomasine immediately. Instead she went to the kitchen. The corridor outside it was pitchy black and she groped her way until she reached its door. Inside, the banked hearth fire gave a ruddy glow to the ceiling beams and across the scrubbed-to-polish tables, showing the long lumps on the floor that were the sleeping kitchen help. Frevisse knew where the things were that she wanted, and no one so much as stirred while she gathered them quickly, nearly soundlessly. A jug of water, a loaf of bread, a cracked bowl for a chamber pot, an apple. The last was an afterthought, because it might comfort a frightened child in the cold last watch of the night.
She left as unnoticed as she had come, back through the black corridor to the cloister again and around it to the church. There, as always, a lamp burned beside the altar, and now two candles glowed at the biers, outlining the heads of the two nuns praying there. Frevisse saw one head lift to look toward her, and then bow to praying again.
Frevisse placed the food and drink and bowl behind the altar, then knelt on the step in front of it to ask for help and anything like wisdom that God or St. Frideswide might choose to give her for what she was going to do and what was going to come of it.
Returning to the dorter, she passed silently between the varied soft—and not so soft—snorings and breathings and someone shifting in her sleep, to the farther end and Thomasine’s cell. Her eyes were used to the darkness by now; she could see Thomasine curled on her side beneath her blankets, hand under her pillow to cuddle it closer to her cheek, her breathing as tiny as a sleeping kitten’s. Frevisse paused a moment, then regretfully touched the girl’s shoulder, waited for a response, then shook her slightly. She felt Thomasine awaken under her hand and said very softly, “Hush, Thomasine. You have to come with me. Dress now and come.”
Thomasine struggled upward, fumbling at her covers. Confused, she murmured, “I haven’t slept past my time, have I? I didn’t mean to sleep so—”
“Hush. No. Just come. You’re fine.”
She felt Thomasine still hesitating and said more urgently, “I’m taking you to the church. Come quickly.”
That reached past the edges of Thomasine’s sleep; Frevisse felt her come fully awake. With no word and hardly a sound, Thomasine arose and began to dress while Frevisse gathered up her bedding and the rustling mattress. They finished together, and Frevisse led the way out of the cell. Silently they passed the dorter’s length, down the stairs, and along the cloister to the church. This time both nuns stared, but Frevisse signed them back to their devotions.
As Frevisse laid her mattress and bedding down behind the altar, Thomasine asked, in a trembling murmur, “What’s wrong?”
“Sir Walter means to break in tomorrow morning and seize you in the refectory. Domina Edith has agreed you should be in sanctuary where he’ll not dare touch you.”
Thomasine’s eyes grew huge, but she made no outcry; after a minute she said softly, “Will I have to leave England? Isn’t that what you have to do if you claim sanctuary?”
“That’s for confessed felons. If you are proven innocent, you will stay right here.”
Thomasine shivered and wrapped her arms around herself against the church’s cold. Or against the fear shining in her eyes. “Can you prove me innocent?” she whispered.
“Dame Claire claims your aunt was poisoned before ever she came here the second time. It was poison making her act so wild when she rode in here that day, not her drinking or a brain fever. Someone was trying to kill her before she was anywhere near to you.”
Thomasine drew in a startled breath. “Then it wasn’t in her wine, with the medicine?”
“The second poison was, and the third, because the first poison wasn’t strong enough. Your aunt looked like she was recovering from it and so someone tried again, but Martha died. It was the third attempt that succeeded.”
With visible effort Thomasine absorbed the meaning of all that. Around them the church waited, layers deep in silence: silence that was part of the night, silence that was left from years of praying, silence until Thomasine asked, “You know who did it?”
“No. Not yet. But now there’s a better chance I can find out.”
“And I have to stay here until you’re sure?”
“Until I’m sure and we’ve proven it to Sir Walter and Master Montfort.”
“I may stay here in the church? All of the time?”
Frevisse realized that the tension in Thomasine’s body was no longer fear, that she was standing eagerly, her face bright with more than just the lamplight. Being confined to the church was going to be no ordeal for her. Frevisse sighed and said, “Yes. Here in the church all the time.” The girl’s face bloomed with happiness. “Now let’s make your bed so you can rest at least.”
Together they laid out the mattress and spread the bedding over it.
“I’ll leave you now,” Frevisse said. “Domina Edith will speak to you in the morning. Until then, rest if you can.”
Thomasine nodded, her face still warm with delight. And Frevisse, looking back from the doorway before going out, saw her on her knees before the altar, hands clasped and face raised fervently toward heaven. Better one of us taking pleasure in this than that we all should be frightened, Frevisse thought wearily, and left.
From weariness more than intention, Frevisse fell to sleep as soon as she lay down on her bed. The bell for Prime woke her with the others, and quietly she made herself ready and took her place in the procession to the church. Thomasine’s absence was noticed, but she was so often in the church before morning prayers that there was hardly any twitch of curiosity at finding her there when they came in. She had
hidden her bed and other things somewhere and was seated quietly in her place, and Frevisse guessed that if the other nuns had heard the rumors of murder and suspicion, her being there in prayer before them was amply justified to all their minds.
The morning hymn began. “Now daybreak fills the earth with light; we lift our hearts to God…,” which hardly fitted with either the day or Frevisse’s heart. The September dawn was obscured by clouds that threatened rain again before the day was done, and her heart was clouded, too, with the many things she had to do and learn today.
The prayers ended at last. Two nuns stepped to their places to resume prayers for the dead. Thomasine stayed where she was, head bowed. Domina Edith gave her neither word nor look, but began to leave the church, leaving no one any choice to do more than wonder and leave Thomasine behind.
Breakfast was uneasy. Silence was still kept, but clearly Domina Edith’s woman had done her work; every kitchen servant came and went from the refectory with half an eye to the outer door and a twitch at sounds that were not there, until everyone had no doubt there was something very wrong and Frevisse would nearly have welcomed a burst of rough voices in the outer hall to break her own tightening tension.
But it never came. Breakfast ended in its wonted way. Domina Edith gave the grace and benediction, and they returned to the church for Mass. Now heads turned openly toward Thomasine where she waited in her place, and Father Henry pattered briskly through his Latin, making clear he was as eager as they to be done with the Mass so they could go to Chapter and find out what was happening.
They proceeded directly from the church to the little room they called the chapter house, where on a normal day they would meet to deal together on daily nunnery business. Domina Edith kindly waited until Father Henry had taken off his vestments and joined them. Then she told them what was to hand, ending with, “So we forestalled them in the refectory, but Thomasine will remain in sanctuary until all this is ended and she’s safe from wrong.”
The Novice's Tale Page 18
